Читать книгу The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922 - C. G. Bruce - Страница 8

The Expedition at Base Camp.

Left to Right, Back Row: MAJOR MORSHEAD, CAPTAIN GEOFFREY BRUCE, CAPTAIN NOEL, DR. WAKEFIELD, MR. SOMERVELL, CAPTAIN NORRIS, MAJOR NORTON. Front Row: MR. MALLORY, CAPTAIN FINCH, DR. LONGSTAFF, GENERAL BRUCE, COLONEL STRUTT, MR. CRAWFORD.

A word about Tibetan tea: the actual tea from which it is originally made is probably quite sufficiently good, but it is churned up in a great churn with many other ingredients, including salt, nitre, and butter, and the butter is nearly invariably rancid, that is, as commonly made in Tibet. I believe a superior quality is drunk by the upper classes, but at any rate, to the ordinary European taste, castor-oil is pleasant in comparison. One of the party, however, had managed to acquire a taste for it, but then some people enjoy castor-oil!

The Lama finally blessed us and blessed our men, and gave us his best wishes for success. He was very anxious that no animals of any sort should be interfered with, which we promised, for we had already given our word not to shoot during our Expedition in Tibet. He did not seem to have the least fear that our exploring the mountain would upset the demons who live there, but he told me that it was perfectly true that the Upper Rongbuk and its glaciers held no less than five wild men. There is, at any rate, a local tradition of the existence of such beings, just as there is a tradition of the wild men existing right through the Himalaya.

As a matter of fact, I really think that the Rongbuk Lama had a friendly feeling for me personally, as he told the interpreter, Karma Paul, that he had discovered that in a previous incarnation I had been a Tibetan Lama. I do not know exactly how to take this. According to the life you lead during any particular incarnation, so are you ranked for the next incarnation; that is to say, if your life has been terrible, down you go to the lowest depths, and as you acquire merit in any particular existence, so in the next birth you get one step nearer to Nirvana. I am perfectly certain that he would consider a Tibetan Lama a good bit nearer the right thing than a Britisher could ever be, and so possibly he may have meant that I had not degenerated so very far anyhow. I should have liked to know, however, what the previous incarnations of the rest of the party had been!

I think in my present incarnation the passion that I have for taking Turkish baths may be some slight reaction from my life in the previous and superior conditions as a Tibetan Lama.

The following morning, in cold weather, as usual, we left to try and push our camp as high up as possible. Our march now became very interesting, and we passed on our road, which was fairly rough, six or seven of the hermits’ dwellings. These men are fed fairly regularly from the monasteries and nunneries, and do not necessarily take their vows of isolation for ever all at once. They try a year of it and see how they get on before they take the complete vows, but how it is possible for human beings to stand what they stand, even for a year, without either dying or going mad, passes comprehension. Their cells are very small, and they spend the whole of their time in a kind of contemplation of the ōm, the god-head, and apparently of nothing else. They are supposed to be able to live on one handful of grain per diem, but this we were able successfully to prove was not the case; they appear, as far as we could make out, to have a sufficiency of food always brought to them. However, there they are in little cells, without firing or warm drinks, all the year round, and many of them last for a great number of years.

Our march took us right up to the snout of the main Rongbuk Glacier, and on arrival there we vainly endeavoured to get our yak-men to push up the trough between the glacier and the mountain-side. There was promptly a strike among the local transport workers, but the employers of labour were wise enough to give in to their demands. If we had pushed further up, we must have injured a great number of animals, and finally have been obliged to return. So we found a fairly good site, protected to a small extent from the prevailing West wind, and there we collected the whole of our outfit and pitched our camp. I do not think such an enormous cavalcade could possibly have mounted the Rongbuk Glacier before. There were over 300 baggage animals, about twenty ponies, fifty or sixty men in our own employ, and the best part of 100 Tibetans, either looking after us or coming up as representatives of the Shekar Dzongpen. Finally, all were paid off, and the Expedition was left alone in its glory. The date was the 1st of May.